**1. Introduction**

Which story touches me? Princes and Princesses? Warriors? Dragons? Which stories made me more certain of who I am? I believe that listening to variegated stories is a way of building a door for the imaginary. This imaginary is full of places, features and characters that will take people to incredible adventures. My aim in this research is to make the art of storytelling closer to the art of theater. Are theater and storytelling—different arts? Is storytelling still worth nowadays? Is it possible to unite the rich simplicity of storytelling with the theatrical esthetics? Is the essence of storytelling different from the theater? A storyteller, a story and someone to hear are necessary for storytelling. What about the theater? Isn't it true that also a text, an actor and an expectator are necessary for the theater? The difference between a storytelling and a theater is basically in the storyteller and the actor figure. The first will tell us a story. The latter will make it happen.

Then, how would it be possible to work with storytelling with children in a way they could be narrators, listeners and interlocutors in a story? How can I work the triangulation among my lens as an artist and teacher, authors who write about children, and children? Which stories "should" or "can" be shown to children of three to 5 years of age? Which strategies may I use to tell a story in which the theme and characters are dense and apparently out of the childhood universe? From the piece *The Tempest,* how revenge and forgiveness might reach children? What is the best way to make all this work moving from a class to a scenic space?

Looking forward to answer these and other further questions, I found out something quite clear: we are the outcomes of diverse histories and stories. Some of them are ours and some we borrowed from someone else, although each has a life of its own. It is not a coincidence that we cannot fix a date for when storytelling started to be a tradition nor if it is going to end 1 day: "The art of storytelling mixes itself with the history of humankind. The human being always had a need (and will always need) to listen and tell stories: for a better understanding of the self and with the world around in [1]". Of course, through time the way to tell a story changed: storytelling has another social function and its activities are promoted through other methods and shapes.

The art of storytelling was been transformed according to the changes in the world and humankind, but has always been kept alive. Stories and storytellers reappeared between the 1970s and 1980s in the European, US and Canadian scenarios and between the 1980s and the 1990s in Brazil and Latin America in general. However, storytellers are quite different from stories and traditional "narrators".

In general, at least in Western societies, storytellers accessed stories from oral tradition from the written rather than the listening tradition. Of course, most people have heard stories during their childhood, usually by parents, grandparents, teachers, and the like. However, contemporary storytellers had access to a huge range of narratives through books.

Living in the Era of "post" (modernity and so on) listening as a practice is often rare, although it is a human need: everybody has the need to "tell" the other about our lives. Our orality is "an artisan way of communication in [2]". There is not a clear line in which one tells a story or the story tells someone's life. In any case, we are all storytellers.

Nowadays, busy parents and technology (frequently substitutes for nannies or an entertainment to keep children well behaved) provide very rare opportunities for children to have new experiences. Even in kindergartens and schools, in general all children have similar experiences—some of them low-quality experiences—offered by professors frequently rigid in parameters or curricula. Educators get stuck into such norms that were supposed to be seen and used as references and guides.

It is worth to provide adventures for children through storytelling, theater and learning. Luciana Hartmann argues it is worth to provide narratives in theater classes, due to the fact that "we react to multi-sensorial stimulations provided by performance. Through that, we attribute meaning in [3]". Carefree learning is funnier and organic, thus more productive.

By letting footprints, fragments of history and their pieces, one can open up possibilities for children to fill spaces with own histories and references, thus appropriating history in a unique and particular manner. In other words, what is the problem of substituting the literality in a route by the sinuosity of creativity? Why to not work with uncertainty and the unpredictable? One thing I have for sure: the imagination cannot create from nowhere, from emptiness. For creating anything, we *Having a New Point in Each Story: Potential Insertions of Theater in Childhood Education DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113002*

need structure and construction, failures and successes, meetings and mismatches. Of course, there are previous knowledge, previous discoveries, combinations of ideas and generation of new ones. For creation, we need work, ideas, heart and sweating during all the processes. Like Benjamin [2] states, "storytelling marks as a mark left in the bowl of clay by the potter's hand: the art of storytelling is a craftsmanship forged with the essence of who does it".

## **2. Here comes the witch: the storytelling**

One of the most world famous stories is Sherazade's (Sahrazad). She survived because she used to grab attention from the stories she used to tell, as she understood that her "audience" was instigated by what would happen next. Sherazade is a character of the classic piece from the world literature *One Thousand and One Nights* that puts together stories and folk tales from diverse parts of India, Persia and the Arabic World written from the beginning of the ninth century onward. It also became the most famous piece of the Arabic literature.

The basic narrative is that the King of Persia was betrayed by its first spouse and after that could not trust anyone anymore. Therefore, after spending some time with a woman in a night, the king used to kill them the next morning to prevent the betrayal. The King did so for a long time, thus killing lots of young women in the kingdom. One time, he met Sherazade and she offered him a marriage, as she had a plan to keep herself alive and save the other women from the kingdom. Sherazade agreed with her sister that she would ask Sherazade a last story before her death: a last wish. The King gave Sherazade's sister the wish and Sherazade started a story that fascinated and intrigued the King so he did not kill Sherazade. Therefore, the King would have the chance to know better about heroes, mysteries, adventures and fantasies. This strategy worked for 1001 nights.

Therefore, for 1001 nights the King awaited excitedly for another story from Sherazade. She told him variegated themes passionately, thus enchanting and instigating King's curiosity every day. At the end, the King realized he could trust on his spouse and could not live without stories anymore, giving up on the idea of killing and making Sherazade a definitive Queen.

The King had the opportunity to review his past and understood his new place. Therefore, his life did not have the need to repeat mistakes and costumes from the past and could be an independent reality. At the same time, while Sherazade was telling him stories, she built her own story, had children with the King and grew them up, which is, she was alive and active! She made from her language and narration tools against death and became the author of her own life and history.

This millenary story demonstrates well the power that a good story has to touch our instincts, convictions, worries, dreams, etc. It exemplifies the power of a history to take us from a reality and from ourselves.

Few things have the power to be old and contemporary at the same time as storytelling. The art of telling a story was perpassed from generation to generation through oral and then written traditions1 . Histories/stories involving the secular and

<sup>1</sup> Traditional culture is an oral tradition. It is a culture guided by the symbol, and the tale is a symbolic manifestation that informs the function within this culture, as it "storages" knowledge to communities. Thus, it is right to state that tales are justified in a different way than Western cultures ruled by writing, in traditional cultures. Anyway, the tale is presented in both.

the sacred, perpassing gods, mystic traditions and bible stories2 , until more daily ones have been a way to teach costumes, religion, social behaviors, tradition and popular knowledge for a long time.

In general, storytellers had a privileged position in their societies, as they keep alive the cultural heritage of a specific group: "The storytellers were leading figures in the community because they were those who knew how to tell, based in facts, stories and myths, keeping alive the cultural heritage through the memory of the group. The storytellers drew stories from own experiences and from the knowledge obtained thereform. Therefore, narrating depended on the harvesting of knowledge from experience and their transformation into objects (visual, auditive, etc.) to be shown to others in [4]".

A way our ancestors chose to educate and alert their people was through stories, and their related experiences. "It is worth registering that the storyteller of tradition, such as *griôs*, had a social role that sometimes was more private and sometimes more sacred, thus this figure is blurred as the "proclaimer" of truth and thereby with strength to pronouce moralities, costumes, principles, memories and ideologies, even in communities that were not preliterate in [5]".

Navigators were also great story disseminators, as they were used to spending months in ships, going back and forth and doing commerce. The crew, to spend time and make the trip more fruitful, had the habit of storytelling. As people were not used to traveling, navigators used to bring with them news and narratives of other people, also using them to sell products and listening to histories of people in the lands. This way, navigators and peasants fed themselves with stories, knowledge, etc.

According to Benjamin [2], peasants and merchant sailors were the primary masters in narrating stories. Benjamin argues that both peasants and merchant sailors were responsible for the preservation of stories, as they were used to exchanging histories. While locals used to share local histories, navigators used to bring histories from faraway places.

In Brazil, in some archeological sites one may find some cave paintings of prehistoric groups that used to live in a region. Some indications that these people used to meet around a fire to talk or tell stories are in vestiges of bonfire, ceramics and other artifacts. "The art of narrating histories stem from ancient peoples that used to tell and perform stories to disseminate rituals, myths, knowledge about the sobrenatural world (or not) and acquired experiences through time in [6]".

In the African continent, the act of telling a history keeps alive and is a ritualistic character. This is something nearer to a sacred moment that is usually shared among members or a village or town. "In Africa, all is "History". The huge history of life includes the history of lands and water (geography), the history of plants (botany and pharmacopeia), the history of "sons from the Earth" (mineralogy and metals), the history of starts (astronomy, astrology) and so son in [7]".

Storytelling is an expression of daily manifestations in many communities, a routine: it is the moment to put everybody together around a bonfire or under a tree. Storytelling is also part of the home environment, as it is a tradition that perpasses the elderly and children. However, storytellers in the continent are inferior to a special figure with superior status in the African tradition: the Griô.

<sup>2</sup> It is worth saying that Jesus Christ preached through parables, so told stories and used metaphors, according to the Bible. The Christian tradition is based on biblical stories and the way they are interpreted: giving advices and dictating standards of conduct.

#### *Having a New Point in Each Story: Potential Insertions of Theater in Childhood Education DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113002*

The Griô figure is nearer to a mystique in the African continent and has special and specific social functions. Overall, the Griô might be compared to the Spanish medieval troubadour. Griô is not a "position" chosen as a lifestyle or a profession. One is born as a griô and thus is part of a family of griôs. Griôs are not a choice but a destiny that one learns since the early age. As griô is not a profession, griôs do not get paid for their activities. Griôs work for their people. A griô has a cultural and comunitary memory and all requirements for the art of orality.

Besides a storyteller, a griô is a musician, poet, organizer, conciliator or emissary who intermediates the communication among ethnic African groups. Griô is an artisan of words, someone who conducts the ritual of listening, seeing, imagining and participating in the memory of a place. He is a person with social and historic function who saves and has been maintaining the African oral tradition at least for the past 700 years.

After about 400 years of human trafficking and slavery in Brazil (1530–1888), our primary cultural formation comes from African histories that once started in Brazil to be mixed to other narratives from different people who lived here. Although storytelling has a strong tradition in Africa and other parts of the world, through time this tradition developed from the family environment or bonfires to other places in societies3 . Storytelling became a contemporary art: manners, techniques and tools changed and keep changing over time. A fundamental issue did not change: people like to listen to good stories, as we are influenced by them. Stories are part of our biological and social constitution: we are pieces of stories in a permanent making. Storytelling is still alive in Western societies tempted by technology and other mindsets.

A modern way of telling a story/history is the posting on social media, whether one is telling something new about the weekend, a graduation ceremony, time spent at the beach, the need of a friend and so on. If in past moments, our ancestors used to draw cave paintings, currently millions of people are accessing personal accounts on social media to do the same. Therefore, the jargon "Once upon a time…" has a huge range of metaphors and sounds like a metaphor itself. When people listen to this sentence, they are invited to have a body posture of listening. By "listening", people open their minds to imagination and emotions. A grandmother telling a story to a granddaughter is actually moving beyond any subject—love, life and death and so on. She is actually creating a space-time and getting into contact with her granddaughter in another level of interaction through a story and its metaphors. There's a pact between who tells and who listens to a story.

Stories also have the power of an experience. According to Merleau-Ponty, children live in-between reality and imagination and this experience might be enlarged depending on the situation. Reasoning is not logical in a child, thus his/her way to see the world is different than an adult world: there's another logic children inhabit that makes them think, feel and behave differently. Children understand the world from their own body and metaphors, such as adults—maybe more viscerally. Children create newer and richer metaphors that will be activated in their entire lives both in the real or imaginary world when they listen to *once upon a time.* Those who learn a story will know how to communicate to them.

Metaphors are part of stories. As in a symbolic structure, listeners of a story will trace their own journeys while listening to a story. Listening thus opens up a dialog with a literary work and a journey through its significances genuinely.

<sup>3</sup> Storytelling has its origin in oral tradition, but in-between the 1960s and 1970s it reappeared in Western societies inside libraries and schools, into the world of writing, thus not through oral traditions.
